The road to Utopia is the road to Hell. — Communism and socialism are the opiates of the intelligentsia. — The left, in its eternal and futile quest for "equality", is more than willing to abolish liberty and sunder fraternity.

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Retrospective Virtue-Signalling

I’ve become fond of “virtue-signalling” — the phrase, that is, not the hypocritical act itself, which is

the conspicuous expression of moral values by an individual done primarily to enhance [his] standing within a social group.

A minor act of virtue-signalling is the grammatically incorrect use of “their” (a plural pronoun), to avoid the traditional “his” (sexist!) or the also correct but awkward “his or her.” That’s why you see “[his]” in the quotation, which replaces the abominable “their.”

Anyway, virtue-signalling is almost exclusively a left-wing phenomenon. And it often takes more acidic forms than the prissy use of “their” to avoid an imaginary lapse into sexism. For example:

An aging, has-been singer shrieks her fantasy of blowing up the White House. Later, she walks it back, saying she was quoted “out of context,” though her words are perfectly clear….

A multimillionaire actress/talk show host not only pretends to believe that Republicans want to return her race to picking cotton, but now wonders aloud just how different we Trump voters are from the Taliban…..

…These awards shows now look more like Comintern speeches with competition to see which androgynous little wussie-pants can sound more macho encouraging “fighting” in the streets, “punching people in the face,” or “Resistance” to frenzied applause from the gathered trained seals. Remember, guys, in a real fight that’s not choreographed there are no stuntmen.

But perhaps the nastiest attacks of all have been on Trump’s family. There were the horrible Tweets about his blameless young son. There were the charming “rape Melania” banners, so odious I thought for sure they had to be photoshopped. They were not. There is an alleged comedienne I had never heard of named Chelsea Handler who announced apropos of nothing that she won’t have Melania on her talk show because “she can’t speak English well enough to be understood.”…

So this is the genius who won’t interview Melania, who speaks five languages. I hope our elegant First Lady can recover from the snub. None of these Mean Girls of any gender would dream of criticizing a Spanish speaker trying to speak English, or correct a black person who said “axe” for “ask” (something I believe they do just to be annoying…). But a beautiful immigrant woman whose English is not perfect deserves mocking. Because liberals are so nice. Virtuous, even. Not Taliban-y at all.

My strongest scorn is reserved for the hordes that have decided to change the names of streets and buildings, to tear down statues, and to remove paintings from public view because the persons thus named or depicted are heroes of the past who committed acts that leftists must deplore — or risk being targeted by other left-wing virtue-signalers.

Retrospective virtue-signalling has been going on for several years now. I’m not sure, but I think it blossomed into an epidemic in the aftermath of the despicable shooting of blacks at a prayer meeting in a Charleston church. A belated example is the recent 3-2 vote by the city council of Charlottesville, Virginia, to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from a city park.

What can such actions accomplish other than raising the level of smugness of their perpetrators? If they have any effect on racism in the United States, it’s probably to raise its level, too. If I were a racist, I’d be outraged by the cumulative effect of such actions, of which there have been dozens or hundreds in recent years. I’d certainly be a more committed racist than I was before, just as a matter of psychological self-defense.

But such things don’t matter to virtue-signalers. It’s all a matter of reinforcing their feelings of superiority and flaunting their membership in the left-wing goody-two-shoes club — the club that proudly boasts of wanting to “blow up the White House” and “rape Melania.”

And the post-election riots prove that the club has some members who are more than prissy, armchair radicals. They’re the same kind of people who used to wear brown shirts and beat up Jews.

Comments & Correspondence

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On Liberty and Libertarianism

What is liberty? It is peaceful, willing coexistence and its concomitant: beneficially cooperative behavior.

John Stuart Mill opined that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." But who determines whether an act is harmful or harmless? Acts deemed harmless by an individual are not harmless if they subvert the societal bonds of trust and self-restraint upon which liberty itself depends.

Which is not to say that all social regimes are regimes of liberty. Liberty requires voice -- the freedom to dissent -- and exit -- the freedom to choose one's neighbors and associates. Voice and exit depend, in turn, on the rule of law under a minimal state.

Liberty, because it is a social phenomenon and not an innate condition of humanity, must be won and preserved by an unflinching defense of a polity that fosters liberty through its norms, and the swift and certain administration of justice within that polity. The governments in and of the United States have long since ceased to foster liberty, but most Americans are captives in their own land and have no choice but to strive for the restoration of liberty, or something closer to it.

Who can restore liberty? Certainly not the self-proclaimed libertarians who are fixated on Mill's empty harm principle and align with the left on social norms. Traditional (i.e., Burkean) conservatism fosters the preservation and adherence of beneficial norms (e.g., the last six of the Ten Commandments). Thus, by necessity, the only true libertarianism is found in traditional conservatism. I am a traditional conservative, which makes me a libertarian -- a true one.

Notes about Usage

“State” (with a capital “S”) refers to one of the United States, and “States” refers to two or more of them. “State” and “States,” thus used, are proper nouns because they refer to a unique entity or entities: one or more of the United States, the union of which, under the terms and conditions stated in the Constitution, is the raison d’être for the nation. I reserve the uncapitalized word “state” for a government, or hierarchy of them, which exerts a monopoly of force within its boundaries.

Marriage, in the Western tradition, predates the state and legitimates the union of one man and one woman. As such, it is an institution that is vital to civil society and therefore to the enjoyment of liberty. The recognition of a more-or-less permanent homosexual pairing as a kind of marriage is both ill-advised and illegitimate. Such an arrangement is therefore a “marriage” (in quotation marks) or, more accurately, a homosexual cohabitation contract (HCC).

The words “liberal”, “progressive”, and their variants are usually enclosed in quotation marks (sneer quotes) because they refer to persons and movements whose statist policies are, in fact, destructive of liberty and progress. I sometimes italicize the words, just to reduce visual clutter.

I have reverted to the British style of punctuating in-line quotations, which I followed 40 years ago when I published a weekly newspaper. The British style is to enclose within quotation marks only (a) the punctuation that appears in quoted text or (b) the title of a work (e.g., a blog post) that is usually placed within quotation marks.

I have reverted because of the confusion and unsightliness caused by the American style. It calls for the placement of periods and commas within quotation marks, even if the periods and commas don’t occur in the quoted material or title. Also, if there is a question mark at the end of quoted material, it replaces the comma or period that might otherwise be placed there.

If I had continued to follow American style, I would have ended a sentence in a recent post with this:

What a hodge-podge. There’s no comma between the first two entries, and the sentence ends with an inappropriate question mark. With two titles ending in question marks, there was no way for me to avoid a series in which a comma is lacking. I could have avoided the sentence-ending question mark by recasting the list, but the items are listed chronologically, which is how they should be read.

This not only eliminates the hodge-podge, but is also more logical and accurate. All items are separated by commas, commas aren’t displaced by question marks, and the declarative sentence ends with a period instead of a question mark.